Mysterious Monday: What Lies Beyond

This Mysterious Monday is unfortunately brought to you, inspired by the death of a neighbor. The man was not in good health and didn’t take care of himself, so while death is always a shock, it is sometimes buffered by events, as this man’s was. My younger boy and I had seen the man just hours earlier, outside in his motorized wheelchair with one of his house-mates, who is also wheelchair-bound. We’ve known these people less than a year, and the man who passed was not one of the more social ones of the group, but it still brought tears to our eyes. It also made me think of what comes next.

Christians believe you go to Heaven or Hell or possibly Limbo, depending on how good you were in life, if you were baptized, or were a good Christian, etc. Hindus also believe in a Heaven and a Hell, all with varying levels of comfort, depending on how good or bad you were. Buddhists believe in rebirth of the soul—if you were good in your life and did good deeds, you would be reborn in human form with a good family and live a happy life; if you were a bad person and performed evil deeds, you would come back as some form of animal. Wiccans believe in rebirth, as well, with a stint in the Summerland to reflect upon your previous life before your memory is erased and you are returned to Earth.

Now I was raised as a good little Protestant Christian girl, but as we moved a few times and got away from going to church every Sunday, I explored other religions. I really liked the ideas of Buddhism for a time, but then I found Wicca and something of that religion spoke to me. I liked the idea that while my body might die, the essence of myself could live time and time again. I don’t like the idea of not remembering past lives, past loves and past deeds, but perhaps it’s for the best. Past lives are not always pretty lives.

More and more as I get older, and my parents near the end of their mortal lives, at least in this go-around, I wonder about what comes next and hope that, of all of them, Atheists are not right. I don’t want this to be the absolute, final End of it all. I love the idea of the Summerland, with a warm sun on my face and cool breezes to keep me comfortable as I reflect on my former life before moving on to a new one, hopefully having subconsciously learned from my past mistakes.

Photo courtesy of Victor Habbick on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What about you? Do you believe in Heaven or Hell or other lives? Do you just want this life to be over when it’s over? Whatever your beliefs, I hope that your afterlife or your next life are good to you. Blessed be!  

Five for Friday: Nothing to fear…

So we were chatting about some of our fears on Gateworld yesterday—fears of heights, of falling, of landing, etc, and my pre-teen also came home spouting off about how zombies were real and he and a friend were going to prepare for the coming zombie apocalypse. He was serious. So I thought that I would do today’s Five for Friday on fears.

Five of my top fears, in no particular order, are:

1. Heights—hate them, hate them, hate them. Oddly, while I cannot climb ladders, nor peek out the windows of high hotel rooms, I have no problem with rock climbing or flying in planes. Now, jumping out of said plane would not happen, not even onto the slide thingy if we had a water landing; someone would have to push me. The vertigo I get from even getting near the edge of an overhang is nauseating. Oddly, I used to hike mountains at every possible chance. Our local one was called Sleeping Giant because it looked like, well, a sleeping giant from a distance. At the top is a two story rock "castle", with open views and stairways. I can and have always been able to climb those steps and lean over or sit on the walls at the top to enjoy the views.

My boy at the castle, trying to freak me out.

View from the castle on Sleeping Giant. East(?) Rock and the city of New Haven in the distance.

2. Bugs—I know it’s not technically right, but I lump spiders in with bugs. They’re all just gross and disgusting and have all those feelers and all those extra legs and…**shudder** They’re just gross. Remember the cockroach? Click the link if you're new to my blog or need a reminder. And I once killed a spider and all these baby spiders came spilling out of the torso. It was like some horror movie. Ewww…

3. Bodily injury—any and all. Now, oddly, when I had to have a cyst removed from my arm, I had no problem watching the whole procedure. But the idea of losing a digit or an appendage or an eye or anything… YUCK! That was my main fear after Jaws came out—that one day I’d be swimming in Long Island Sound and a shark would attack and tear off my leg. And the idea of becoming something’s dinner in the process of that bodily injury is another squick for me. I have NO desire to become part of the circle of life.

The last two are a lot more personal and serious and very likely should be the top two.

4. Major injury or death of one of my children. All their talk of joining the military scares the Hell out of me, I admit it. But at the same time, I’m so very proud of them. That does not take away the fear of one day having the men in their dress uniforms show up on my door. I remember one time, when I was working at a restaurant, we heard a horrible crash. We rushed out to find that an SUV had gone through a couple of concrete signposts. Inside the SUV was a child about my oldest boy’s age, wearing a Little League uniform. My oldest also played Little League. This boy had a compound fracture and I was, I admit it, more than a bit shaken. To have this child so horribly injured that he might lose his leg or even his life, and to have him be so “familiar” was terrifying. I never did find out what happened to the boy and can only hope that the quick reactions of my fellow workers and I (I was freaking, not immobile) helped in some small way.

5. Alzheimer’s. Mom has it. She is worse every time we talk. She freaks out over nothing one minute and can’t remember her reaction the next. She is making my father’s life a living Hell and doesn't even know it. I am terrified of getting it myself one day. Her father had it and now she does; however, her other siblings show no signs, and the two boys are older than she is. To be fair, the oldest may be having issues, but I have not been a very good niece, and have let life get in the way of keeping in touch with long-distance loved ones. At any rate, I have already told my boys that if I become like my mother, I am to be brought to a home or quietly dispatched so I do not ruin others’ lives. I feel so horrible for my mom, because she is no longer Mary, and she would be appalled if she knew this was how she was behaving. I also live in fear that she will hurt my father one night and never even realize it, or that he will need medical help and she will not remember that he needs the help or how to dial the phone for 9-1-1. I have many people reassure me that I am utterly different from my mother--I get out and socialize, as well as working, chatting on the internet and being generally busy with activities between my local RWA and my boys. I play online games from Lumosity, but I sometimes wonder if I'm fooling myself with them, as my mother does with her crossword puzzle books ("That's how I'm fighting this thing. Keeping my brain active."); she's losing the battle in a bad way and it's terrifying.